Clockworking
by Arch-Magos Winter
Summary: This piece came in third in the Action category in the Beasts Lair 2013 fanfiction contest. An unnamed Enforcer fights a Dead Apostle to the death.


The Enforcer felt the snow crunch under his boots as he headed towards the small town the Dead had claimed. The stars were blocked by clouds as snow fell down and the wind howled at the desecration in the town below. The Enforcer let out a silent prayer for all. He had been too late. He would make up for that in the best way he knew how – blood for blood. Footprints in the white powder moved into the town, and none left it. This would be it, the culmination of years of hunting, planning, and slaughter. One way or the other, only one pair of tracks would leave this little town in the middle of Siberia.

The first of the Dead to approach him received a pair of seven point six two millimeter hollow point rounds straight between the eyes, courtesy of a "liberated" Cold War SKS. Magically enhanced vision and years of training and experience made for a lethal combination when combined with a calm and methodical mind. It was absurdly simple: Aim for the top of the "T", pull the trigger twice to make sure the target stayed down, acquire new target, repeat. Congealed blood and brain matter painted the snow red as the shots echoed around the ghost town.

It brought back memories. Memories of long nights spent waiting for the perfect shot, memories of fire in the dark brought forth from will and words burning down towns with its hungry tongues of heat. Memories of slaughters like this one, as he chased down and destroyed the ones who he had been tasked to erase utterly from existence and memory itself. His rifle's action stayed open, the magazine empty, and the Enforcer mechanically dropped the magazine, pulling a fresh one from his belt and ramming it home before working the action and returning to his calm and methodical fire rate. The Enforcer moved more like clockwork than any normal man should. No wasted motion. No emotion. No hesitation. Just quick, millimeter precise movement.

It took only several minutes to thin down the Dead enough to rouse their creator. By this point, blood painted the snow all around in crimson streaks, lances of color in an otherwise monochrome night. The oil that lubricated the gears of people and the Enforcer, and fueled his foe was ignored by his enemy. Haunter of the nights. Vampire. Dead Apostle. Murderer. Target. It went by many names. None of them the one given at birth.

He walked with an elegance and arrogance particular to his kind. The Dead Apostle seemed to float over the ground, leaving not even a trace of his footsteps on the snow. Blood never touched his shoes, and in his thin clothing he looked even more comfortable than the heavily insulated Enforcer.  
"Is this all they've sent?" the Apostle asked, his distain and contempt emanating from his every pore. "I merit this little after this long?"

The Enforcer didn't speak. His rifle barked six more times, and the last of the Dead fell to the frozen ground, released at last from their undesired immortality. He reloaded mechanically before speaking.  
"Only one needed."

The Apostle laughed. "I've killed more than my share of magi and mortal alike. And they only send one?"

"Only one needed," the Enforcer said, before he opened fire on the vampire. Each round traveled several times faster than the speed of sound. To the average human, the time between pulling the trigger and the round hitting would be instantaneous. The Dead Apostle smiled, his fangs glimmering in the low light and, simply stepped around every single one. The rifle clacked empty, and he lunged forward. His nails formed into claws and he swept down towards the head of the Enforcer, seemingly attempting to split him in half with a single strike.

The mortal reacted nearly as fast as his bloodsucking foe, raising his rifle to block the claws aimed at him. They sliced through the metal and wooden frame, as the Enforcer threw himself backwards and out of harm's way. However, a massive wall of snow smashed into his side, sending him sprawling into the snow as the flakes attempted to crush him like frozen fists. The Enforcer struggled to his feet, several ribs broken and a concussion pushing at his mind, as the Dead Apostle moved closer, his fangs showing in a macabre smile.

"Just your luck magus. I am strong at this time and in this place. All this ice and snow, all mine to command." He extended a hand, crystals forming in his grasp, sheer cold and ice taking on a physical presence, before he launched it at the Enforcer. The Enforcer raised his arms taking the brunt of the assault on them, the force of impact sliding him backwards. The synthetic covering and insulation material of the coat froze and cracked, shattering as the Enforcer reached into his coat and pulled out a small pistol. His arms were fully revealed to the world in all their inhuman glory.

They were lit by an inner magical fire. Gears and clockwork whirred and clicked as the arm shifted. Pistons pumped back and forth as the trigger was pulled, hot lead flying uselessly at a being faster than sound itself. Puppet limbs were nothing new, but they at least looked human. These? These did not. Human shaped perhaps, but undeniably something else, something _wrong._

They had been invented in the Victorian era, their design eventually circulating among magi that saw the future in brass and steam and gears and clockwork contraptions that could do all a man could do - and even more. They could be complicated to the extreme, but modifiable beyond belief, and far more durable than their construction suggested. It would take a force beyond that of a sledgehammer like blow to even dent these replacements for the flesh.

The Enforcer hadn't needed replacement arms – or for that matter legs. The ones he had at birth had still been functional. But the talents of his quarry had demanded something stronger and tougher than mere flesh and blood. So the Enforcer had decided to simply upgrade to something better than human. Stronger. Quicker. Both more dexterous and more durable. Simply put, he'd needed an edge.

And he'd gotten one, though it had cost him dearly. He fought a mental battle every day, not to grab a hammer in his teeth and attempt to start smashing his metallic augmentations to bits. It had been worse; much worse at the start. The sympathetic magus that had done the surgery had physically needed to restrain him for nearly a month while his body adjusted to its new baggage. But in the end, the rewards meant more than the toll on his mind and body as it tried to expel his foreign additions. Or at least, that's what the Enforcer told himself every day when he looked into the mirror.

The Dead Apostle hissed at his foe, springing closer with each step, swinging again with his claws at the Enforcer's head. The metal hands reacted as fast as or possibly even faster than his own. The Enforcer blocked the strikes on his forearms, his limbs clanging in the peculiar pitch that magically enhanced steel possessed. The bones of the vampire cracked from the sheer impact. His leg came up, a miniature sonic boom forming from the sheer speed of the action, kicking out and hitting home with a similar sound to the one of his arms impact against unliving flesh. The Dead Apostle's knee buckled as the strike shattered it, twisting his leg into a position that was not conductive to staying upright. The vampire screamed as he fell. Another cascade of white-stained-pink snow and razor sharp icicles flew at the Enforcer, shoving him back and nearly impaling him through and through, instead shattering on his limbs of brass as he curled into a ball. The impacts rocked his body, and bones splintered but refused to break.

With a sickening "crunch" the Dead Apostles limb fixed itself, bone refusing into something capable of supporting human weight. Snarling, the vampire dispelled his claws, focusing all his energy into the snow around him. The Dead Apostle didn't have much time. Dawn was coming soon, within two hours. He mentally kicked himself. He shouldn't have played with his food, and just done the practical thing and squashed him like an insect right off the bat.

"Know your end is now, puppet."

The Dead Apostle had made a single mistake. One that would cost him his life. He, for the first time, had been outplayed. For a split second, he wondered why the Enforcer hadn't used his own magical abilities as soon as he displayed his. The answer came in a very painful form. He had. The majority of the snow in the area was coated with a fine mist of blood, a subtle trick that had escaped the Dead Apostles notice. All of it was within feet of his body. All of it, primed to kill him with nothing more than a thought of the Enforcer.

Out of the wall of white flakes, formed swords, spears and hammers of blood, and weapons that defied categorization. They flew. The Apostle had no time to dodge, run, or protect himself beyond instinctively raising his arms to shelter his head. Spears embedded themselves into his torso, hammers smashed his legs to a bloody self-replicating pulp that slowly advanced their way up his body, and swords slashed his arms raised in a futile defense to nothing more than ribbons and ground down bone.

The body fell to the snow, still desperately clinging to life. The crunching of snow came closer as the Enforcer walked over and looked over the Dead Apostle's body as it continued to destroy itself.

"Enjoy this victory. You will die, like the rest of your pathetic lot in time." the Dead Apostle said, looking up into the face of his killer.

"I found no enjoyment in doing what needs to be done. This was a job. Nothing more."  
"Hah. I wonder which of us will be more human when the end greets them. Or perhaps which one of us is more human even now."

The Dead Apostle closed his eyes, as the boot came down, ending him with a sickening crunch as the skull shattered and brain matter painted the snow before his body became ashes. The Enforcer simply stood there, frost forming on his mechanical limbs as the remains of his foe blew away on the light wind, before beginning his long journey back home through snow and ice. One foot followed the other, like clockwork.


End file.
